Government OKs Car-to-Car Talk

MADISON, Wis. -- In its announcement on vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication technology Monday, the US Dept. of Transportation (DOT) pledged to “begin taking steps to enable” V2V for light vehicles. But the government agency stopped short of proposing rules on the technology, a necessary step to trigger a chain of events that could lead the industry to an eventual mandate of V2V on every light vehicle in the United States.

However, it is unclear if the Monday announcement provided enough heft (and urgency) to put an end to naysayers’ arguments against V2V.

V2V continues to be a divisive issue, splitting the industry into two extremes: those who think the government’s V2V mandate is dead-on-arrival versus those who believe in the V2V initiative to substantially reduce traffic accidents.

Unanswered questions include whether technological progress -- seen in Google cars and Advanced Drivers Assistance Systems (ADAS) -- has already made the V2V mandate irrelevant, or whether the V2V initiative is destined to become a safety necessity for all cars, including every economy car. The great divide is between a “leave-it-to-the-market-force” approach, and a belief that the government should take action for the greater good.

DOT said in its announcement that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), currently finalizing its analysis of data gathered as part of its year-long pilot program, “will publish a research report on V2V communication technology for public comment in the coming weeks.” NHTSA will then begin working on “a regulatory proposal that would require V2V devices in new vehicles in a future year,” consistent with applicable legal requirements, Executive Orders, and guidance, according to the agency.

DOT also laid out its own research results indicating that safety applications using V2V technology “can address a large majority of crashes involving two or more motor vehicles.”

The announcement said:

With safety data such as speed and location flowing from nearby vehicles, vehicles can identify risks and provide drivers with warnings to avoid other vehicles in common crash types such as rear-end, lane change, and intersection crashes. These safety applications have been demonstrated with everyday drivers under both real-world and controlled test conditions.

'X-ray vision' There are a few clear advantages in embracing V2V.

When asked about the blessings of V2V beyond the functions of sensors currently integrated into ADAS, Drue Freeman, senior vice president, NXP Semiconductors, made it clear: “Current ADAS sensors are all line-of-sight. They cannot see through objects or around corners.” In other words, he explained, “V2V effectively gives the car virtual ‘x-ray vision,’ ” by providing critical information about what is happening “around blind-intersections, around corners on winding roads, or even several vehicles ahead on the road when there may be high profile vehicles like trucks in between.”

Roger Lanctot, associate director at Strategy Analytics, isn’t so sure. He pointed out, “It is important to remember that the Google car poses the possibility of saving lives without any connectivity at all, purely via on-board sensors.”

Of course, current Google cars have limitations -- especially in terms of cost. Lanctot, however, maintained that the cost is “plunging and the capabilities are expanding without any mandated hardware or software or infrastructure.”

Industry skeptics’ ambivalence toward V2V largely stems from the timing of its potential implementation. For any government mandate, the regulatory process is time-consuming.

Well, you know, as long as there are still drivers behind the wheel, if V2V is incompatible or non-existent in a neighboring country, no big deal. You simply won't have the benefits of it.

Everyone should look up online videos, taken from cameras inside cars, of real-world traffic accidents. Some are truly spectacular. And there's almost nothing a human driver can do, all too often, to avoid the crash. V2V would prevent many of these, by alerting the driver of this erractic maniac about to cross over in your path. Really. Take a look.

There are different ways this could pan out. For all who have the libertarian streak, where government involvement automatically disqualifies the entire subject matter, the IEEE and IETF have done a fantastic job at enabling what I'm doing right now, with NO government involvement. So the auto companies and universtities can certainly pull this off on their own.

I'm convinced that in a few decades, people will be amazed that we ever drove without these new measures, using only our own eyes and ears. It will seem incredibly primitive and beyond reckless.

As to V2I, as discussed several times in other articles, that's a whole 'nother matter. I think it's essential for full automation, but V2V could certainly improve safety in the meantime.

Oh, and Kris, my USan PC seems to have no trouble communicating with UKan UBM, or reading your Canadian post!!

In my opinion, making V2V systems legal and mandatory will make drivers more dependent on such systems and less attentive in their driving; and blaming the "system malfunction" whenever some accident happens, thereby claiming damages from insurance companies as well as from the "system" manufacturers.

Such systems are helpful only if they prevent the errant drivers from breaking the traffic rules and posing hazards to other drivers . So such systems should prevent a car to cross the red signal, force it to stop wherever there is a "STOP" sign., regulate the car speed automatically as per the speed limit zones and so on.

The problem I see with this is how will you assure even adoption. Until a critical mass of people has this technology, it is basically useless. How do you get the numbers of people driving these kinds of cars up there to begin with?

Bert, I can read your post too...hurray!, US English to Canadian English translation is working well ;-)...the reason is that Internet was invented and build quickly around the globe...other communication standards are different story...and I wil mention again km to mile translation, major engineering projects (space rockets, missiles, cars) failed because someone forgot to convert to units...I really don't want to have more technology in my car pls, I just to want to drive! Kris

@zewde, obviously, this won't happen overnight. But either a mandate (needs rulemaking) or an industry auotmotive safety rating (safety stars?) could help propel the penetration of cars with DSRC technology.

I agree Zewde...unless government decides to mandate this technology it will be useless...hopefully there is enough push back against any attempts to legislate this...I don't want my car to be networked to anything!...the givernment should focus on delivering something useful like public transportation, buses are much more efficient than cars and they can network them as much as they want, I won't be behind the weel...Kris

@BrainiacVI, exactly. The auto industry is famous for dragging its heels.

Aside from seat belts, there is also an issue with backup cameras. The idea was to equip all new cars with backup camera so that drivers can see what's behind their car. It was almost mandated last year, but it fell through. Here's a clip from Auotmotive News.

DOT proposed rules in 2010 that would have required backup cameras in all new cars and light trucks. Final rules were delayed multiple times after automakers and White House officials raised concerns over costs. Before leaving office this year, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood set a new goal of completing the standards by 2015.

I agree with the decentralized nature of the V2V discussed here. It is very tempting to try to centralize this, similar to centralized Air Traffic Control. As the article says, the latencies would be a real problem. That being said, there are still a lot of details to be worked out. Presumably the communications protocol would be self-describing and versioned, which would eliminate the "inches versus meters" problem mentioned earlier. If it included identification information and vehicle information (specifically speed) then police radar would become unnecessary (there's a selling point for you...). It would become very easy to put fixed receivers in place to track at least how many cars pass a particular point and potentially exactly who they are (another boon for the police). My first thought was that a decentralized implementation would have fewer privacy concerns, but that lasted about two minutes.

Bert, I can read your post too...hurray!, US English to Canadian English translation is working well ;-)...the reason is that Internet was invented and build quickly around the globe...

I agree that this is not always the case, but the reason that devices can interoperate over the Internet is that those who develop the protocols have so far seen the advantage of doing it this way. Enlightened self-interest.

Where I work, we used to have a complicated scheme of Softswitch gateways, to allow our IP, SNA, IPX, and DECnet networks in the company to interoperate. It didn't work very well, because naturally, it was practically impossible to make all the features of each protocol translate correctly into an equivalent feature of another protocol.

So, the auto industry can take it upon itself to follow the example of the IETF, or actually participate and use the IETF to ensure interoperability.

Different units of measure are no problem. Software can easily convert between them. All you need there is to identify the measurement standard along with the measurement, when you write the message standard. Or alternatively, the message frames can be mandated to always use the same system, say the metric system, and then any local display of the information can translate to the user's preference. (My car already allows this, btw, for the instrument panel.)

Analog radio, old-style vinyl records, and even CDs, have always interoperated globally. It's not impossible to achieve this. If there's a will, that is.